Throughout the Middle East, the green almonds of early spring are nibbled raw, added to salads, or cooked together with lamb in a lemony sauce. In Greece they are preserved in heavy syrup, as yet another spoon-sweet, like karydaki (green unripe walnut), or melitzanaki (tiny eggplants, the most exotic of our spoon-sweets).

Green almonds are also pickled. Unusually delicious and crunchy, they are served as an appetizer, together with various kinds of olives, pickled cauliflower, peppers and carrots. Their sour taste complements perfectly the sweet and strong anise-flavored ouzo or raki. READ MORE (The Atlantic)

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Easter is to Greeks what Thanksgiving is to Americans: a glorious family feast with dishes that make the most of the young season’s early produce. Unlike Thanksgiving though, Easter (April 19 this year) is a four-day celebration, the religious reconstitution of ancient pagan rituals that celebrate the return of the spring: the feeling of the sun’s warmth, the renewal of the earth, the blossoming of plants after the dark and cold winter. Like all big Orthodox festivities, a forty-day period of Lent precedes Easter.

All foods deriving from animals with red blood – meat, dairy, and eggs— are prohibited; during the holy week, especially on Good Friday, even olive oil is banned from the table. Lentil soup, simply dressed with vinegar, was the traditional dish prepared for good Friday, but I propose a warm salad of mixed beans with garlic-lemon-tahini dressing, still within the rules of Lent, and much more interesting. (more…)

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Full of fun, easy, zesty and healthy recipes, my new and very summery book is out at last! You can click here to order it. I am sure you will love this sample recipe. It is a hearty salad that can also be a main dish. It became our standard picnic fare. We always make it the night before our lunch on the beach with friends. Grilled sadines or lamb chops on our portable BBQ is the main dish, but everybody –friend and participants at Kea Artisanal rave about the bulgur salad.

_{Photo by ANASTASIOS MENTIS.}

The recipe is based on Bazargan, a Syrian-Jewish salad that Claudia Roden included in A Book of Middle Eastern Food. I first tasted it many years ago, during a food conference, and I was immediately fascinated by this earthy, fragrant, and crunchy sweet-and-sour mixture. Claudia whipped it up during a cooking demo, and as she gave us tastings she pointed out that the salad was not ready because it had to sit for a few hours so that the grains could soak up the flavors from the sauce and the spices. Reading the recipe in Claudia’s old book, I wasn’t tempted to try it—one of my very few such misses. I am so glad I had the chance to taste it, so now I am passing the torch.

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In the last newsletter describing our ‘summer highlights’ we had to leave out two very important visitors whom we are now privileged to consider our dear friends: Journalist and Saveur kitchen director Hunter Lewis, and photographer Penny de los Santos.

They joined us here on Kea in-between our two May programs. Together we cooked and grilled, enjoyed lunches and dinners, while tireless Penny recorded everything in her inspiring photographs. Costas hiked to the ancient temples with Hunter, and we had the most wonderful time with two incredibly warm and talented people! We wouldn’t exaggerate if we said that some of us shed tears the night we parted, as Hunter and Penny boarded the ferry to Lavrion. (more…)

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In the dead of winter, when seaside taverns are closed and the cold wind beats mercilessly against the deserted beaches, islanders slaughter their pigs. Pig-slaughtering is still an important annual festival for the locals on Kea, as on all the Cycladic islands.

In the necessarily frugal old-days, it was an essential undertaking; today it is more of an occasion to gather, eat, and drink homemade wine and raki, the local moonshine… MORE

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